I'm a bit of a Dune nut. Read the original six by Frank Herbert three times. Tried to read the first one by his son. Yikes! Do not bother with anything NOT written by Frank. I cried from boredom.
Children of Dune is actually my favorite book of the lot. It turns the politics and intrigue from the first book on it's head, which I appreciate. The psychotic freak out starts with God Emperor and tapers off in the fifth book. I enjoy the last three because they reveal a lot of what happened BEFORE the first book and why the society etc... was set up the way it was. The fourth book especially gets into all kinds of psycho-philosophy about societal constructs. It's super thinky and not really a true novel. More fictional manifesto. It's also the most disturbing in a lot of ways.
The very end of the sixth book is freaking dumb though. That was a fine stopping point.
I'm also a fan of both the Lynch movie and the two miniseries by the Sci-Fi channel. Both of the miniseries cover the first three books. The second miniseries is an overall better production in my estimation. It seemed to me that the money made on the first one was dumped right back into the second one. The movie actually feels like God Emperor to me... really nutty and super archetypal. The miniseries are much more grounded.
yeah I much preferred the Lynch movie which succeeded in capturing an amazingly visceral representation of the Duniverse, whereas the scifi series, while trying to be more canonical and true to the books, just felt dull in comparison. Or in other words, since its the kind of thing where book will always be better than TV, Lynchs Dune works much better as an extra experience and doesnt really pretend to be a serious book adapatation, whereas the series tries and fails to be that and is kind of unneccessary IMO.
I like the prequels. Dune is far beyond sci-fi in terms of literary value and storytelling. The few after it are trying for that greatness but fall a bit short. The prequels are cheap pulp action stories and I really enjoyed reading them as disposable stupid sci-fi. For a movie analogy it's like The Godfather being this masterpiece of cinema far beyond just the mob movie vibes, but Goodfellas is still a damn fine time even if it's mostly just cheap mob movie thrills.
I'll slog through just about any series if I like the first enough. I LOVED Dune.. but only made it about halfway through the third before I stopped reading it. I could honestly say it was garbage.
Man, you guys are making me so weary of getting the book. I'm not the heavy reader I used to be and I admit I found Dune hard to get into from a reading perspective so reading a similarly difficult sequel that may not be too good doesn't sound too great to me.
I'd actually take note of what Black Loter says. The prequels are trashier, more obvious, "hollywood" sci fi but theres no need to be ashamed of that. I am a huge fan of the originals, ALL of them including the epic attempts at something far beyond the original scifi storyline, but I enjoyed at least the 1 or 2 of the "House ...." prequels I read, exactly as Matt described. If you can't be arsed to work through the heavier originals, just give one of those others a try, you'll know pretty quickly if its something you'll enjoy. I quite liked the one that went on a fair bit about Ix and the bit about the origin of the Spicing Guild (twins).
Damn! It's been a loooong time since I read all of em. I read the last of them through the late 80's in college - enjoyed them a lot at the time. But now 25 years or more later, everything after children sort of flows together into one long montage.
I need to read 'em again. Then again, I've got a massive pile of backlog reading material, that I have to get through *first*.
Definitely long-winded overall: If you don't enjoy the early material, it's not going to get lighter moving forward.